Awarded Projects of Second ANR-NRF Joint Grant Call

The second ANR-NRF Joint Grant Call, with a focus on basic research into materials, nanotechnologies and nano systems was launched in September 2015. 43 full proposals were accepted when the call closed in April 2016.

Following evaluation by a joint evaluation panel from ANR and NRF, the following projects were awarded.

Project BoroGaN seeks to study the re-orientation of nano-crystals in self-aligned materials for the purpose of developing highly directed thermal channels for thermal dissipation in next generation electronics. Its aim is to enable these new thermal management methodologies for commercial applications. Assistant Professor Teo Hang Tong Edwin from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (in collaboration with CINTRA), College of Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Dr Michel Nicolas of III-V Lab are the coordinating partners for this project.

The ITrans project aims to design automated methods to back and forward port software components between infrastructure software versions. Its work will focus on the Linux kernel, supporting infrastructure ranging from mobile phones to supercomputers, and the Android runtime system. The resulting system will provide flexibility and reduce time to market by enabling industries that rely on legacy systems to access newly available services and to modernise their legacy components. The partners for this project are Associate Professor David Lo and Assistant Professor Lingxiao Jiang from Singapore Management University (SMU), and Senior Research Scientists Julia Lawall and Gilles Muller from Inria.

3. QUANTUm METamaterials with High Tc Superconductors (QUANTUMET)

Information and Communications Technologies aim at processing and exchanging information by means of electromagnetic waves and electrical currents. For a long time, engineers and researchers have been using natural materials to implement these processes, emit and receive waves and signals. In recent years, "metamaterials" have been developed with fascinating properties that enable the manipulation of light at micro-nanoscale and provide interesting functionalities. Among them, arrays of metallic resonators have been intensively. To limit the losses which impair the metamaterial properties, superconductors appear as ideal candidates, at least up to the terahertz frequencies. In addition, they present a natural tunability, since their inductance can be changed with the temperature. Superconductors are also the only macroscopic quantum mechanical systems. Assistant Professor Ranjan Singh from Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Nanyang Technological University and Professor Jerome Lesueur from ESPCI Paris Tech, France are partnering to work on novel quantum superconducting metamaterials.

4. HYBrid NAnoPlasmonics (HYBNAP)

Plasmonic nanostructures have specific resonant 'dark modes' that cannot be excited by light, and are therefore not usable for device applications. This proposal seeks to develop a flexible research platform for investigating and tuning nano-optical properties of hybrid emitter / metal nanoplasmonic systems with unprecedented spatial precision. This platform will be used to access dark modes by placing nanoscale emitters at so-called high optical LDOS sites of plasmon resonators, allowing unique far-field access and control over dark plasmon modes that are otherwise inaccessible.

The project will be implemented by a team combining nano-optical simulation groups (Wu Lin at A*STAR' Institute of High Performance Computing and C. Girard at CEMES France), chemists (V. Marchi at Rennes France), fabrication experts (J.K.W. Yang at Singapore University of Technology and Design) and nano-optical characterisation groups (M. Bosman at A*STAR's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and E. Dujardin at CEMES France).